Simple Exercises That Can Calm The Mind Faster Than Meditation

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JAKARTA - Regular meditation exercises can help manage internal brain chats and help you feel a little calmer. But when you want to stop a busy mind, you might be able to do it with your mind.

Yes, that's right. With a little effort, your voice can actually be used strategically to relieve feelings of anxiety at any time and anywhere. The process is slightly different from what you might do when, for example, cleaning the bathroom or walking home from work on a sunny day. But, not too different.

The exercise called bhramari is yoga breathing exercise. Its name is taken from India's black bees, because the stumbling sound produced by humans resembles the buzz of bees. Like other deep breathing techniques, bhramari sends physiological signals to the body to relax and you are not in danger.

"When stressed, the body activates a sympathetic nervous system, or our fight-or-flight method and our breath automatically becomes short and shallow," explained Pauline Peck, PhD, a certified psychologist and yoga expert based in Santa Barbara, California.

Taking a deep breath, such as bhramari breathing, allows us to activate a parasimpathic system, or a rest-and-dIGest system, which makes it easier and calms our nervous system, Peck continued, as reported by Livestrong, Tuesday, September 19.

Peck also assessed that making my voice also has additional benefits, namely massaging the sound band, which stimulates the vagus nerve. This nerve, which stretches from the brain to the large intestine, is involved in control of unconscious functions such as heart rate and mood. When activated, your heart rate starts to slow down and you start to feel your breath is more regular, driven from the Cleveland Clinic.

Deep breathing exercise such as heart rate slows down, which can indicate a decrease in blood pressure. This, in turn, can calm the body's stress response and help you feel more relaxed, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Although research on bhramari is still limited, the available evidence supports this. Sitting for five to 10 minutes has proven to be enough to help someone feel fresh and even happy and able to increase focus. According to a review in the January 2018 edition of the Journal of Traditional and Complementary Medicine.

It was also found to reduce the stress levels felt in the long term and improve sleep quality if done regularly for six weeks, according to a study by the International Journal of Physiology in February 2021.

Simple actions such as staying away for a moment from anything that makes you stressed can also help.

"Take a break for breathing exercise is a good mental re-tuning, giving changes in views, and strength in order to respond to stress," said Peck.

If you know how to handle it, then you are halfway through practicing bhramari. Next time when you feel anxious or overwhelmed, just do the following;

Peck suggests you can use bhramari as a method to feel calmer whenever necessary. But you will experience the most real stress level drop when you commit to doing regular exercises, for example, every day or every week.

"The more often we train our breathing, the better we enter a calm state and release anything that is not useful to us at this time," he said.